Love’s Labors

A letter in response to Alex Ross’s article (November 12, 2012)

Ross’s article was a powerful précis of how much progress has been made in the gay-rights movement in a short time. With few exceptions, most of the movement’s advancement has come in spite of, not because of, the efforts of the Christian church. But the sometimes overlooked United Church of Christ, a left-leaning Protestant denomination, was the first to ordain an openly gay minister, the Reverend Bill Johnson, in 1972, on the third anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion. Since then, we have ordained thousands of gay and lesbian ministers—refugees from religious traditions that would not have them, and candidates who grew up in the United Church of Christ. We now have hundreds of churches that declare themselves open and affirming of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people of faith, as well as of those people without it. My parish is one of these. The Church is usually twenty years behind most cultural zeitgeists, but in this case we helped bring progress about.

The Reverend Molly Phinney Baskette

First Church Somerville United Church of Christ

Somerville, Mass.

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